Navigation

Language

Diabetes

Menu

World Diabetes Day 2017: Women and diabetes

14 November 2017 marks World Diabetes Day 2017. WHO joins partners around the world to highlight women’s right to a healthy future. Around 8% of women – or 205 million women – live with diabetes worldwide, over half in South-East Asia and the Western Pacific. During pregnancy high blood glucose substantially increases the risk to health for both mother and child as well as the risk of diabetes for the child in the future. Almost half of women who die in low-income countries due to high blood glucose die prematurely, before the age of 70 years.

Global report on diabetes

The first WHO Global report on diabetes demonstrates that the number of adults living with diabetes has almost quadrupled since 1980 to 422 million adults. Factors driving this dramatic rise, which is largely on account of type 2 diabetes, include overweight and obesity. The new report calls upon governments to ensure that people are able to make healthy choices and that health systems are able to diagnose, treat and care for people with diabetes.

World Health Day 2016: Beat diabetes

The main goals of the World Health Day 2016 campaign are to increase awareness about the rise in diabetes, and its staggering burden and consequences, in particular in low- and middle-income countries; and to trigger a set of specific, effective and affordable actions to tackle diabetes.

What is diabetes?

Diabetes is a chronic, metabolic disease characterized by elevated levels of blood glucose (or blood sugar), which leads over time to serious damage to the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves. The most common is type 2 diabetes, usually in adults, which occurs when the body becomes resistant to insulin or doesn't make enough insulin. In the past three decades the prevalence of type 2 diabetes has risen dramatically in countries of all income levels. Type 1 diabetes, once known as juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin by itself. For people living with diabetes, access to affordable treatment, including insulin, is critical to their survival. There is a globally agreed target to halt the rise in diabetes and obesity by 2025.

About the diabetes programme

The mission of the WHO Diabetes Programme is to prevent type 2 diabetes and to minimize complications and maximize quality of life for all people with diabetes. Our core functions are to set norms and standards, promote surveillance, encourage prevention, raise awareness and strengthen prevention and control.